Science and Social Status : The Members of the Acadmie des Sciences 1666-1750
Editorial Reviews
Review
Thoroughly researched, a veritable treasure trove of biographical information. BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Vividly depicts real people struggling with the financial problems of everyday life and the peculiar social system of Louis XIV's France... a significant contribution to the scholarly literature concerning the Academy and the evolving social status of French men of science at the dawn of the eighteenth century. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Sturdy's assured grasp of the political and cultural complexities of early modern Europe will prove valuable to any reader interested in the relations between absolutism and intellectual culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. FRENCH HISTORY A fine book which deserves readers of several sorts... history of science, sociology of the past or French history. CANADIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY
Book Description
This comprehensive survey of the members of the Acadmie des Sciences to the 1750s takes up the challenge to search for `a way to connect history of science with social and cultural history at the bottom (the level of the scientists) rather than at the top (the level of philosophical debate about science and culture)' (T.L. Hankins, `In Defence of Biography: the Use of Biography in the History of Science', in History of Science, 17 (1979), 1-16). The book focuses primarily on the academicians themselves; and although it has much to say about the Acadmie as an institution, it does so in the light of the changing positions which the academicians occupied in the social hierarchy of early modern France. It explores the implications of those changes for the development of the Acadmie down to the mid-1700s, and it argues that throughout this period the relationship which the Acadmie had with the Bourbon regime and with French society in general, was governed to alarge extent by the personal circumstances of the academicians. Science and Social Status complements other major works dealing with the Acadmie, but differs from them in content, sources and method, and adopts a perspective on the Acadmie which is of relevance to historians of science and social historians of early modern France alike.DAVID J. STURDYis Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster.
Science and Social Status : The Members of the Acadmie des Sciences 1666-1750,David J. Sturdy,Boydell Press,085115395X,Academie des sciences (France,Acadâemie des sciences (France),France,History,History: World,Members,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Popular Culture - General,Scientists,Social conditions,Sociology Of Science,History of medicine,History of science,Science / History,c 1600 to c 1700,c 1700 to c 1800
Science and Social Status : The Members of the Acadmie des Sciences 1666-1750
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